IPRA announces thirty-three winners of its Golden World Awards for 2003

Awards were made to entries from Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Poland, Republic of Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, UK and the USA. The GWA, now in their 13th year, are organised by the International Public Relations Association and sponsored exclusively by Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

The winners' list reflects the great diversity of public relations activities and the enormous talent within the industry worldwide. Winners included a public affairs programme to introduce new credit card laws in Turkey; a marketing communications programme which created The Guinness Party of Canada; a campaign to generate public support & acceptance for biotechnology in agriculture in India; a programme which took Charmin toilet paper to State Fairs across the USA; the privatisation of the Swedish Post Office, British Telecom's sponsorship of Tate Online, and a campaign promoting heart disease prevention in Poland

A number of agencies and organisations are to be especially congratulated as being the winners of multiple awards - The Ankara Chamber of Commerce, Nedbank Ltd, Burson-Marsteller, Corporate Image Holdings, Edelman International, Ruder Finn Asia for Citigroup Asia Pacific, Strategic Objectives, and Weber Shandwick.

The competition's international jury, composed of 43 senior practitioners from 20 countries, completed its adjudication of 219 entries in London on September 5th. Criteria used by the jury to examine each entry included the competence and quality demonstrated in terms of research, planning, execution and evaluation, the clarity and coherence of messages, creativity and ethics, as well as local conditions in the country of origin.

"These winners, both from in-house and agency entries, show evidence of world class, planning, execution and measurement" noted Jury Chairman, Louis Capozzi, Chairman and CEO of Manning, Selvage & Lee, (USA). "The GWA entries from both mature and emerging public relations marketplaces continue to reach higher standards each year, and the judging is becoming increasingly challenging. This year our jury had to compare several, outstanding programmes from small and emerging public relations marketplaces, with entries which have used perhaps ten times the budget in a much bigger country or on a regional or even world wide basis. It was also most encouraging to see more entries from fast growing public relations markets such as Indonesia and Israel which have not been so well represented in the past."

"In spite of the difficulties of comparing such a diverse group of entries" said Capozzi, "our jurors in London this year were finally persuaded by evidence of strategic planning, sound and original creativity, and most importantly, first class evidence of the results meeting the stated objectives."

Each year the jury votes for one of the Category Awards winners to go forward as overall winner. The Grand Prize for Excellence will be announced and presented by Mr Yoshitoshi Kitajima, the Chief Executive of sponsor DNP, at the gala GWA dinner taking place in New York in February 2004.

The GWA United Nations Award, a co-operation between IPRA and the UN, to encourage public relations campaigns which meet the aims of the United Nations, will be judged and awarded later in the year.

The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) is the premier association for senior international public relations professionals. With over 1000 members worldwide, IPRA's activities include the global public relations magazine IPRA FrontLine; seminars and conferences including the Public Relations World Congress; the public relations website www.ipra.org which includes the IPRA Virtual Library; the IPRA Campaign for Media Transparency, and the annual IPRA Golden World Awards for Excellence, which recognize the best programmes from around the globe. IPRA is headquartered in England.

Award winners

Creativity Award Winners

Evaluation Award Winner

Frontline Award Winner

Research Award Winner

United Nations Nominees